RE: Business case for dual monitors

Subject: RE: Business case for dual monitors
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: "Char James-Tanny" <charjtf -at- gmail -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 16:21:42 -0400

Char James-Tanny claimed:
> > As I recall, there are ways to indicate which monitor should receive
> > notifications and particular windows on most dual monitor setups.
Is
> > this not the case?
>
> I'm mostly able to control it here (using nVidia with two LCDs). Some
> apps overrule me ;-) and persist in opening on the primary monitor,
> but most "remember" and open in the last place I had them open. (One
> thing to note: if I open something...file, email, whatever, move it
> where I want, but don't close it before opening another item of the
> same type, then the second occurrence opens where the first occurrence
> originally opened.)
>
> I currently have Outlook and a HAT on my primary monitor, and
> MailWasher, IE7, Firefox, a Word doc, and a PDF open on the secondary.
>
> Oh, and I've positioned my monitors so that I'm lined up to the left
> of the seam. I do most of my work on my primary monitor and use the
> secondary for reference. It works for me :-)

If I had a third monitor, it would have e-mail on it. Then one of the
other two would have current doc or Help that I'm working on, and the
third would have source materials and/or the application that I'm
documenting.

As it is, I've got the two, and I keep a lot open on either. Usually, if
I'm working on a project and a quickie comes along, I just leave the
project doc open (in Word or Flare or FrameMaker) and open the quickie
stuff on top. Then another quickie comes along, then another... Then I
have to reboot. Drat.

But until Windows leaks its brains out its ear and demands a reboot, the
pile of windows on my desktop can be stripped back and I'm right where I
left this-or-that project. For me, the visual cues from the working doc
- at whatever page I left - and the supporting doc or application on the
other monitor are usually enough to get my head right back into what I
was doing before I was interrupted-interrupted-interrupted-...

As for the physical experience, I'm centered on the seam between the two
monitors they are arranged to face me, meaning that the angle between
them is less than 180-degrees ... about 170 seems comfortable at the
distance I keep them (arm's length plus a foot).
If I'm working hard on one monitor, and need to see something for a
moment on the other, it's just a quick swing of the eyeballs or _maybe_
as much as a ten-degree turn of my head... hardly onerous.

If I'm actually switching work focus to the other screen for a while,
then it's a ten-degree swing of my entire body. That's what swivel
chairs are for. I don't even need to adjust my hand or keyboard
position.

The likelihood (as somebody else mentioned) of moving a window
off-screen and having (say) Outlook open all succeeding e-mails
off-screen is exceedingly low, and no more likely than if I had only one
screen. I don't know why that one poster had an open-side for his
mousing. Across my two monitors, all OUTER perimeters are mouse
barriers. Only the common side is mouse-permeable.

So, for me, all the difference between one monitor and two is positive
difference.

Kevin
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Follow-Ups:

References:
RE: Business case for dual monitors: From: Greg Holmes
Re: Business case for dual monitors: From: Gene Kim-Eng
Re: Business case for dual monitors: From: john
Re: Business case for dual monitors: From: Rob Hudson
Re: Business case for dual monitors: From: Char James-Tanny

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